Pasta Crazy
KFI (640 AM) is gearing up for its 13th annual holiday Pasta-Thon, in which the station’s air personalities, staff and management work together with Chef Bruno Serato raising money and food to benefit Serato’s non-profit Caterina’s Club, which serves more than 25,000 hot meals every week to children in need throughout Southern California.
This coming “Giving Tuesday,” November 28th, station personalities Bill Handel, Amy King, Gary and Shannon, John and Ken, Tim Conway Jr., and ‘Mo Kelly will take part in an all-day (5 a.m. to 10 p.m.) live broadcast at Serato’s Anaheim White House Restaurant, located at 887 S. Anaheim Boulevard. The personalities will collect donations of money, pasta and sauce — 100% of which directly benefits Caterina’s Club.
In addition, donations can be made at participating Wendy’s restaurants throughout Southern California and Smart and Final locations in California, Arizona, and Nevada. You can also go straight to PastaThon.com. Barilla’s pasta is another partner in the event.
KFI programmer Robin Bertolucci told me that the goal is to have donations surpass last year … and last year was a record-setter. “It’s a bit daunting,” she said, “but our generous listeners always come through in a huge way, and every year we have grown this wonderful charity.”
Last year, the 12th Annual Pasta-Thon has raised $1,313,683 and approximately 47,000 pounds of pasta and sauce. Considering the relatively humble beginnings — in hindsight, at least — it’s an amazing accomplishment. KFI Executive Producer and Pasta-Thon promoter Michelle Kube told me that the first year of the event raised just over $80,000.
“Since that beginning in 2010, our family of KFI listeners has helped us raise $5.9 million and 750,000 pounds of pasta/sauce donations for Caterina’s Club. When we started he was providing 300 meals to kids a week, now he’s providing 25,000 every week,” she explained adding that the meals are served to kids at 100 locations spread over 30 cities.
The goal for this year? “Break last year’s record by $1,” Kube said. Hopefully it will be even more.
I asked Chef Bruno, as he is known, how he manages to run a successful well-known restaurant, while feeding more kids than what appears humanly possible. Passion, long days, and a tremendous staff, he explained.
“Since I was 14 years old, I’ve always worked long days … 14-15 hours,” he explained. “But I love my work. I wake up each day looking forward to it, so it’s not like work – it’s a passion.”
He went on to explain that he used to serve lunch at the Anaheim White House he has owned for the past 35 years, but as the children’s meals expanded he realized he couldn’t do both. Now his crew of about 20-25 starts cooking the kids lunches every morning at 5:00, and his regular restaurant staff arrives about 2 p.m. to prepare for the dinner menu.
Caterina, by the way, is Mamma Caterina, Chef Bruno’s mother. Chef Bruno and Caterina one day were visiting the Boys and Girls Club of Anaheim — down the street from his restaurant — when his mother noticed that there was a 6-year old boy eating potato chips for dinner … his family couldn’t afford a proper meal. Caterina insisted that her son make some pasta for the child; from those humble beginnings sprung Caterina’s Club.
For even more information, https://caterinasclub.org.
Early KOST Christmas
Getting a slightly earlier jump on the holidays, KOST (103.5 FM) went all-Christmas on November 10th. Typically the station goes with the holiday format sometime about a week before Thanksgiving. Perhaps world events pushed them to go at little extra early this year.
Or maybe it was the ratings that had them below sister My FM KBIG (104.3 FM) … traditionally, all Christmas music propels the station not only to the top of the ratings … it puts them into another orbit, often with twice the ratings of the next highest station. Makes you wonder how much of each year’s advertising revenue comes form the holiday season.
I asked Saul Levine if he planned to program all-Christmas music on Go Country (KKGO, 105.1 FM) again this year as he has done many times in the past. He declined comment for now, which means — if my memory and past experience serves right — most likely “yes.” probably after Thanksgiving, though.
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